Writing the Unseen (Part 1)

Have you ever watched a bird coast through the air, high above the treetops? It tilts one way, then the next, gliding along wind gusts with ease. A bird in flight is uniquely ethereal – it pulls on my desire for transcendence like nothing else, leaving me with an ache for something higher. Something more. And yet I remain tethered by gravity to this earth, bound here by my flesh, when my soul clearly and impossibly wants nothing else than to fly.

Words can do the same thing. As readers we know this. At some point in our lives, most of us have read something – a paragraph in a favorite novel, a sacred text of some kind, maybe even a child’s misspelled scribbles — that created a sense of longing in our souls. Perhaps we went searching for that feeling. Or maybe it took us by surprise, when the impossible ache for something more interrupted our lives and stopped us cold.

Writers, take note: This deep sense of longing is the key to writing about the unseen. If you can tap into that ache for transcendence, your words will resonate with readers more deeply than you ever thought possible.